America Shifts Left

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WASHINGTON — The center of gravity in American politics moved left in Tuesday’s off-year elections.

Republicans took a big step back from the Tea Party. An ebullient progressive was elected mayor of New York City. And a Democrat was elected governor of Virginia after campaigning unapologetically as a supporter of gun control and a liberal on social issues.

The one bright spot for Republicans, Chris Christie’s landslide re-election in New Jersey, was won precisely because Christie ran briskly away from the party’s right wing and developed a civil relationship with President Obama. His victory speech spoke of the need for politicians to go to places where they might be “uncomfortable” — exactly where the Tea Party does not want to go.

And in the one direct intraparty fight over the GOP’s future, a Tea Party candidate lost a primary in Alabama to a more traditional conservative. A telling distinction between the victor, Bradley Byrne, and the defeated Dean Young: Byrne said that Obama was born in the United States; Young suggested the president was born in Kenya.

Young’s persistent “birtherism” is a reminder of how far right the American political discussion veered after the elections of 2009 and the midterms of 2010. The pendulum is swinging back.

And this week was not just a story of the Republican Party struggling to disentangle itself from extremism, or of the revival of moderation. The Democratic victories in New York and Virginia plainly marked the triumph of two different kinds of progressivism.

Terry McAuliffe may have won in Virginia as a middle-of-the-road, business-friendly champion of “jobs.” But he was also firmly liberal on gay marriage and abortion, and cast Ken Cuccinelli, his opponent, as a social troglodyte.

More than that: McAuliffe was outspoken against the National Rifle Association and in favor of a variety of gun-safety measures, including background checks. McAuliffe did not shrink from his F-rating from the NRA. He boasted about it.

His outspokenness was rewarded. He won the suburbs outside of Washington, D.C., overwhelmingly and built a large margin among women. The power of the gun-control issue should not be lost in the sometimes foggy talk about centrism. This should embolden supporters of sane gun laws.

In New York City, Bill de Blasio built the day’s second landslide on another sort of liberalism, a populist assault on rising inequality. In a victory speech that will be read as a manifesto for a new progressivism, de Blasio declared that inequality “is the defining challenge of our time.” He renewed his campaign call for modest tax increases on the best-off to finance education programs to give poorer kids a chance to join the ranks of the successful.

141 responses to “America Shifts Left”

“The public is as conservative as it has been in 50 years. To highlight this point, Professor Bartels presented the public’s policy mood – James Stimson’s measure of public support for government programs-from 1950 to 2012.”

Yes, but not that much It is too bad Republicans/Tea Party keep putting forth candidates that are far more conservative than the people are willing to accept. It helps to focus on our bigger issues. Like spending, economy and maintaining a market driven economy and away from socialistic policies

I see no socialist policies, I see the government trying to do what is best for its citizens, I enjoy public roads, public parks, government services, food inspection, social security and medicare in retirement, the benefits of the ACA, consumer protections from Wall Street excesses, if these are socialism, so be it, the country is fare better off with these things than without them!

You are entitled to your opinion no matter how uninformed it is Government is just supposed to do what no private enterprise would do (because the project is too large and costly and/or there is no short term profit in it) In my experience, government is not terribly efficient doing anything, because it is rule by politicians whose primary goal is to get reelected or attain a great job after their public service and bureaucrats with tenure and NO pressure to be efficient. The problem with Obamacare is that government took a large chunk of our economy and load it with regulations and guidelines not quite knowing what the final cost would be…… OR, maybe that was the intent all along, to make sure that Insurance companies, hospitals and doctors suffer great financial distress while the people will clamor for better service and care……and the Democrats “will save the day” by going to a single payer system. Any conversion of any private enterprise to government control is Socialistic in nature. Do you think Lenin decided to get up one day and abolish private property in USSR? No, it first took on the unpopular large land owners and all the people applauded…then, one step at a time screwed one enterprise after another until they had total control. Same playbook was used by Castro in Cuba, he first nationalized the America Companies “stealing our natural resources” and the mob applauded, then he took the properties of the real rich people (and the mob applauded) then he instituted the G2 and block defense committees and collected private weapons (to protect our country from the evil Yankees which then was Kennedy) and the people accepted this because it was for their “protection” See where this is going? See a pattern here with NSA spying, Gun control and so on?

There is more to America than just $$$. People tend to look at Socialism in terms of just the management of the economy and control of the means of production, but Socialism is ultimately a MORAL ideology. The ultimate goal of Liberalism is what Irvin Kristol put well:

“Liberals are willing to give up liberty in exchange for moral anarchy.”

The goals are not bitter, they seem to have a reasonable platform, that is based on self reliance, less taxation. The social issues are distorted a bit. Abortion issues should not even be discussed anymore….the issues get twisted into a hatred of women and on and on……..no one hates women. They are after all fine sperm depositories as was mentioned by the Democrat campaign of new governor of Virginia . …silly stuff…..rhetoric To rile the emotions of women….they are irracible enough due to hormone cycles….do you not think….why titilate women any further ….it is an on going transparent technique used by Democrats for years and is getting tiring. ..it is effective though in arousing a women’s fury……Democrats know what they are doing on this hot button matter by taking advantage of a woman’s emotional instability….do you not agree.

In principle I would agree with you, but I am financial/benefit consultant and people share with me far more than they share with their closes friends. I have no hope for a moral America. People find all sort of excuses to live off government teats and still feel they are acting like moral individuals. As a professional, my job is not to judge them, but help them attain their goals legally…. As an individual, I am appalled. I find that government policies originally intended to help the poor and the disadvantage are doing the most damage to the American family and their perception between right and wrong. It is incentivizing families to dissolve (or appearing to dissolve), and incentivizing them to lie. cheat and steal in order to get more benefits. I have no hope in people becoming moral again, I just want to remove the incentives for the immorality.

Excellent summation. Lack of self reliance will result in looking for a hand that will not be there…only hands grasping for throats ….then we start all over again……Maybe write a constitution to project us from oppression from people, monarchs / governments that want to tax us to prosperity. Have we not seen this somewhere?…..Tea Party rebellion , 1773. Almost 240 years ago to the day.

There are still the other 47% out there plus vascillating independents that vote other than democrats, liberals. The Tea Party. goals are not bitter, they seem to have a reasonable platform, that is based on self reliance, less taxation. The social issues are distorted a bit. Abortion issues should not even be discussed anymore….the issues get twisted into a hatred of women and on and on……..no one hates women. They are after all fine sperm depositories as was mentioned by the Democrat campaign of new governor of Virginia . …silly stuff…..rhetoric To rile the emotions of women….they are irracible enough due to hormone cycles….do you not think….why titilate women any further ….it is an on going transparent technique used by Democrats for years and is getting tiring. ..it is effective though, in arousing a women’s fury……Democrats know what they are doing on this hot button matter by taking advantage of a woman’s emotional instability….do you not agree.

The swing to the Left is an experiment that failed and the American people probably have had to experience. It is time now to move away from Leftism, and revive our Founding principles and return to decency and morals.

You mean cheating and racism? That’s what the Tea Bigot Party is all about. You know nothing about the US Constitution and nothing about founding principles, for sure. You’ve proven that over and over.

You are a vile and despicable Tea Bigot. All of America knows you people are liars, cheats, racists, and — last but not least — nut-balls. ANYTHING that has to do with Tea Bigots is becoming politically toxic.

Wishful thinking on your part. Polls show a younger generation that has moved left of their parents and Tuesday’s election results and recent opinion polls show a public with decreasing taste for what the Tea Party and Conservatives on the Right are offering. The voters clearly see the biggest failures coming from those on the Right whose approval ratings make President Obama’s seem sky high.

Really? if your statement is true, how did Obama get elected twice? How come the GOP didn’t take over the Senate last election when all the pundits thought they would, its because the country is center left, not right of center!

Christie’s win is totally from a Tea Party platform that runs through the electorates mood , certainly in NJ , a very anti-tax and no mercy for government spendthrifts, this philosophy is very prevalent, but silent in most of the population in the US…. where as Cuccinelli almost beat Terry Mccauliff due to anti- government / ACA miscues. This is a foreshadowing for Democratic senate seat in danger of being lost in Nov 2014. I fear the Democrats will lose many seats on this one.

And Obama is the 44th US President. If racism was never a factor, one could assume that at least 6 Presidents would have been black — in proportion to their percentage of the US population. If we count those who have one black parent, it would be more like a dozen or more.

Rejoicing because Democrats won in Blue states, and moderate Republicans defeated Tea Party candidates, ignores the fact that conservatives still enjoy the support of most voters throughout the South and the Bible Belt. Mainstream America remains a centrist society on foreign affairs and many social issues, but it has not moved left. That is, unless that claim refers strictly to the Tea Party which is, indeed, losing ground to traditional conservative Republicans and Independents. The meaning of that shift is very much in question. Are Tea Party candidates being defeated by establishment conservatives because voters have abandoned their goals, or is it because they understand that the only way to win the White House in 2016 is to project a semblance of pragmatism where none exists?

I agree if we go to far to left, that would end up being rejected by the voter as well. The majority of the voters will never tolerate moving too far in any direction and what’s happening to the Tea Party is just a modern example of that. There are plenty other in history.

I am cursed to live in one of those red states controlled by the teatards, it makes me sick that the state I was born in has become the home to so many racists radicals that it no longer values virtues the bible teaches like taking care of the poor and they worship money while claiming to be Christians!

Southern and Bible Belt voters respond to the propaganda they are fed, they tend to be conservatively religious, so an anti-abortion message rings true for them. They love to hunt, and now many are very anti government, there are “doomsday preppers” among them, so a pro-gun message resonates with them. Republicans present a very cloudy picture of economic issues, they make sure that the message about the ACA is very focused, and very negative, so that the very people who should embrace it are hateful of it. The Republicans have also well sold the idea that unions are evil, and that a higher minimum wage will mean fewer jobs, and the Southern and Bible Belt voters seem to swallow that, too, although it works completely against their better interest. But the Republican message is so well delivered and finely tuned, that, so far, their message has hit its mark. Add that to the low funding for education in those states, and you can see why the voters would not be sophisticated about picking out the half truths and outright lies that they are hammered with. Democrats will have to do a better job of delivering their message there if they hope to convert any voters.

The GOP message also addresses the fact that the white majority that has dominated every facet of life in America since we became a nation will become a minority within the next 25 or 30 years. Subtle innuendo about preferential treatment to minorities, allegations of segments of our population being a burden on hard working Americans – which by default mean that minorities are lazy, don’t work, don’t pay taxes and depend on government handouts to subsist – resonate throughout the South and other parts of the country. The election of our first African American President confirmed their innermost fears and serves as a catalyst to do whatever they can to delay the inevitable and demonize the achievements of a man they hate. Needless to say, not everybody in the South and in the Bible Belt thinks alike, and that is especially true among the young and the better educated. Evidence of change can be found in states like Virginia and North Carolina, and it may not be long before the old prejudices, lack of long term vision, and twisted values, become a sad chapter in our history.

Many thanks to E.J. Dionne for another fine article. One of many sentences stood out for me — “…Republicans would be wiser to pay attention to the fact that McAuliffe recreated the coalition which twice elected Obama….”

Republicans will never be the wiser about anything beyond the darkness of their “troglodyte” sphere of existence. They are no longer “conservative” but have sadly allowed themselves to be reduced to “authoritarian” by the extremist TPs.

The problem with conservatism today is that it’s anything but conservative. What does that word “conserve” really mean? That you shift wealth upward and never downward? That you alter prosperity insured by the US Bill of Rights to all Americans so that only 1% enjoy prosperity and are perceived as the only true laborers in the entire country?

To conserve anything includes a certain amount of balance of preservation of rights and liberties. When you have “conservatism” of the brand we see today, this is anything but true. In every conservative state, they are not preserving the rights of voters, women or those who choose a different lifestyle. They are not balancing rights and liberties for all when they refuse to pay living wages, allow affordable healthcare and then, run to the federal revenues like a fire sale at a bank to help themselves to subsidies and more tax cuts than they deserve.

They are not conserving anything when they use our federal tax revenues to support corporations who hire and create more jobs offshore and then unbalance the rights of workers in THIS country to earn a living wage.

Conservatives today are a royal joke…They believe in their wealth entitlement to the exclusion of rational balance of the economy. They’d rather see the entire country go down the toilet than to allow a loss of a single dime by any of their corporate cronies.

Today, conservatism come down to one and one thing only: How much of our federal tax dollars do conservatives plan to hand over to their corporate welfare recipients? Meanwhile, roads and bridges crumble, education and emergency services are ignored and defense spends more on an unusable jet just to keep Boeing and BR in high end stock value.

Bravo!!! I would also add the conservatism is also an oxymoron when you look at the intersection of “big government – bad” when it comes to economics and “necessary” when it comes to social issues like abortion, gay rights… things the mega church evangelicals care about. Also, the agenda of the Tea Party is nothing more than a resurrection of the agenda of the John Birch Society, with whom they share a direct linage. But the hidden (not to far beneath the surface) attitudes of conservatives is centered around hierarchy… that they, as aristocrats by being winners of economic Darwinism, are the only ones fit to rule, and the rest of us should just sit down and shut up. We should all buy into their message: just lower our taxes and get rid of regulations and YOU TOO CAN BE RICH.

In a very real sense you are totally correct. There never has been a “united” states. Each state, more and more, acts like Fiefdoms. The only thing missing between state borders are Border Guards and Gates.

As far as I’m concerned, the south could all leave the union and northern states join with Canada. I’d be happy as a Lark.

I never realized the scope of the situation until I read: “American Nations; a History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America” by Colin Woodard. A great read which will change your perspective.

And of course we will simply ignore the constant negative effects of Big Pharma on present day American Medical practice and its corruption of the Hippocratic Oath because afterall,sick and dieing people just don’t matter and don’t stack up in importance when compared to corporate profit. Change the overall dynamic of treating symptoms to that of treating the cause of sickness and disease,and medicine will return to doing what it is supposed to do.Corporate heads know that healthy people don’t need to buy prescription meds.Therefore their idea is to treat rather than to cure.I guess they are afraid that they will run out of sick people. OH NO!!! Now We Must Face a Disease Shortage.

You are misguided, big pharma develops many drugs to have us enjoy our complaining about profiteering till we are much older. Sick people do matter , they increase all of our profit margins… As receivers of pharma s products, …as receivers of 401 k distributions from Pharma so we can enjoy our longer life span with financial comfort…as receivers of profits for reinvestment in research to develop better drugs.

That’s right! I repeated the information from statements made officially by the AMA.You have no interests in those statements or any other that fail to fall in line with your mental contortions.You have no intelligence either.

I did respond to your agreement with the AMA. You are allowed to repeat these items if so stated by AMA, not necessarily does it apply to us practicing in the pits. AMA is frowned upon by many for its politicizing .

Not at all,we merely fight fire with fire and are intolerant of bullshit.We are quite familiar with troll tacticts here and respond accordingly.If there are those who object to the alleged AMA politicizing it is no doubt in response to statements that were on the mark.Just because someone objects does not render the AMA any less an authority on medical issues and practices within the medical community.The AMA is very helpful in the enlightenment of people to the offenses of Big Pharma.Gratefully,the industry is not completely devoid of positive works.

Really? and I guess you claim to never lie either! the biggest threat to the economy and the continuation of this great country is the emergence of the tea party, and now after the shutdown, GOP will be punished in the mid terms!

wish we could just get the Tea tards and the REpublicans that all seem to hate America so much to leave, please leave if all you ever do is run America down, do something to make things better instead of always doing things to try to prevent others from making things better!

What a laugh…Attacking a family like Honey Boo Boo’s? Attacking private property like the private properties Big Rich Texas That Whole Other Country (I hope soon becomes a foreign country) stole from people in Nebraska for the Keystone Pipeline and handed to a foreign country like Canada?

Attacking Christianity like the Bible Thumpers who want to own women’s reproductive rights and tell them what they can and can’t do with their own bodies or the Christianity nuts who want their and only their religion to be the religion of the US?

Your post gets nuttier and nuttier when you try to make “liberty” as in “liberalism” into your brand of plantation ideology…barely living wages like in the south and midwest, huge dependency on federal rather than your own state tax dollars and making everyone else pay through higher and higher premiums for Honey Boo Boo and the rest of DogPatch’s healthcare? No thanks…Liberalism All the Way. Conservatism equals antebellum relic plantation ideology.

No you are not welcome here. If you can work and you don’t, that’s MY brand of conservatism. If you can pay taxes they rest of us pay and refuse? That’s also my brand of conservatism.

I take no pity on stupidity of red state conservative who allow their politicians to live like King Boehner or McConnell all while the people in their states refuse to demand living wages and decent healthcare. My brand of conservatism says if you hate the president, hate the US, what the hell are you doing in this country? There’s the door to North Korea. Don’t let it hit you in the butt on your way out. If TX, OK, CO, AZ and the rest of the bull tyrant red states seceded, may my state contribution to federal taxes wouldn’t be so high.

All freeloaders love to live off the hard earned money of others. Sorry…My conservatism says it’s time to get out of bed at sunrise like the rest of us do and get a job that pays you a living wage so I don’t have to contribute to your state’s shortfalls.

Are you confused? I’m not a conservative; I’m a progressive. I liked your previous posts and don’t understand your attack. I worked 23 years and am semi retired, but still work several days a week. I WANT southern secession; it’s the only way we will get rid of the cancer that is the tea party.

The reality is that in the US people want to move forward…never backward. How many of us who are now seniors want to go back to the peculiarities of the 1950s when bomb shelters and the Cold War spawned men like McCarthy and Roy Cohn?

The truth is that the perception of liberals and progressives by narrow minds is totally erroneous. There isn’t a liberal alive in the US who doesn’t expect healthy Americans to support themselves. There isn’t a liberal in the country who wants to pay the lion’s share of someone else’s taxes, be they rich or middle class.

The reality is that Americans of any educational level loathe the idea of others who have learned to game the system the rest of us end up paying for. That includes some of the US’s biggest profiteering businesses and corporate CEOs as well as those who file phony SSDI claims for things the rest of us go to work with every day: Type II diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Yet, you have people in some states who know their state will back them 100% as they deplete SS the rest of us pay for so they can collect on phony SSDI and sit home and watch TV or play on their computers.

It’s pretty difficult for hard working Americans to swallow the landfills of excuses some lazy Americans use to stay in bed until noon while their SSDI checks come rolling in and their state refuses to put them back to work all in the name of helping corporations avoid hiring and job creation that diminishes their corporate profits.

No American wants their state taxes to go through the roof like mine do in NJ just so corporations will locate in the state and then become leeches of our tax dollars.

This is the conservatism of liberals, centrists, progressives and moderate. In other words, decent, common sense Americans.

Not only the poor rip off the system so does corps and that is why everybody feels entitle to some gov’s money (read money borrowed from China) It is time we sit and review all subsidies, taxes, welfare and entitlements. If the politicians do not have the gut to do it (and probably they should not be involved to diminish partisan blow back), assign a committee of nonpartisan qualified economists, sociologists and experts with the binding authority to do what needs to be done. not another Bowles-Simpson plan totally ignored by the administration. There are a lot of decent, common sense Americans living off government teats without giving a 2nd thought…because, “everybody is getting something” so why not me.

The problem at the moment is that we have certain politicians who believe you can work a lifetime, have payroll deductions removed from your paycheck and then it should have zero ROI. Meanwhile, they expect ROI for THEIR investments. All I’ve ever heard from the hardliners with a back room agenda is that SS is a Ponzi scheme. No. It isn’t How is paying for 4 decades into a program a Ponzi scheme anymore than paying for 4 decades into a 401K? Both are payroll deductions and both offer the expectation that when you pay for something, anything, you have a right to expect something in return. Anything less is government charitable donations.

We’ve had anti-trust laws in place since Teddy Roosevelt. Yet, these anti-trust laws are ignored all in the name of reinterpreting their intent and meaning to suit.

No country can survive when for profit Big Businesses are so pervasive in every department of government. That type of government structure reassigns Constitutional rights that belong solely to citizens to those who can no longer start a business, make it profitable long-term without help from the government. That’s patently wrong.

When you choose to own a business, you choose all of the pitfalls owning a business and making a profit incurs. You don’t run to taxpayers for one bailout after another while your business becomes solely dependent on taxpayers who get zero ROI or reciprocity in the form of creating jobs or hiring all while pricing is jacked to extract profits from the very people already paying to keep this businesses afloat.

The government is not the only source of coercion. We have seen corporations becoming again, as they were in 1900, de facto governments in that there is no higher law (that’s what government is) to stop them from coercing their employees by moving jobs overseas and busting unions. These people like to read Dickens backwards to make it end happily for them.

most of the liberals I know are Christians in the true sense of the word, they believe in taking care of the poor, they believe in strong families, and where I live most are property owners, so your statement is not only wrong, it is and outright lie, lying sure proves you are far from Christian!

Corporate cronies have been given their rights by the congress and signed off by the presidents over the years. All of congress is governed by the PACs. Representing their special interests. There are no PAC s for the middle class working tax payer. We deserve what we have sowed/sewed, now we have to eat it/ wear it. We the people have to march and get them all out. We are to blame. They get elected and serve themselves. Most have never worked at a real job.

Ms. Whittaker I love you. You have identified today’s “conservatives” as a pack of phoneys. Real conservatives would stay out of gay rights, contraception, abortion, and life-style choices on the basis that the government has no business messing about in our personal lives. These that we suffer with today are not conservatives at all, they are Shiite Baptists because they sold their political brand Bible-thumping morons.

Remember how McCarthy formed his regime and caused needless suicides and all he had to do was continually lob fearmongering blame on people like Lucille Ball? Gary Cooper and anyone else his grave digging phony Roy Cohn could scalp? This is the same method these creeps of the right use. Of course, it isn’t working. Sane people know sociopaths when they see behavior that is so out of control and hear the kind of hate that these garbage mouths spew forth. This is an easy one to defeat. Shove as much truth and facts up their noses and their heads burst…rofl.

I have to agree with E.J. Dionne BUT slightly different, that partially or slowly US is moving towards the left. Folks didn’t like what they saw recently. How can anyone who has the right mind, shutdown the government which is struggling very hard to come out from the economic disaster it faced 2008? I do think we all, are obliged to think first before we act. Did these people who shut down the government think first where the country is economically, what it has gone through, and where it anticipates to be? If shutting down the gov. with a little disagreement from the opposite side, is what the right side is sticking to, I do not see the reason why can’t good thinking people, abandon them and take the different side which is the left side.

Let us know lose sight with the realities that surround us, and succumb to the “socialist” mantra being advanced by those whose idea of progress is limited to unfunded crusades. The truth is that American corporations are posting record profits, dependence on foreign oil is going down, unemployment is going down, the stock market is at record highs, the civil servant population has been reduced by over 700,000 positions, and the Federal budget deficit has been cut in half since President Obama was inaugurated in 2009. All of this while withdrawing from Iraq, being on target to be out of Afghanistan by early 2014, and ridding the world of some of the most abominable terrorists in history. If this is what the GOP considers Armageddon, bring it on!

Very good post. I agree with your point about Democrats needing to campaign better than they have in the past–and they certainly have to step up to the plate when it comes to campaigning and voting in non-presidential elections like the one coming up in 2014. Many of progressives on this comment thread share with you a deep respect for the well-being of the government itself. Your sign–“FRAGILE, HANDLE WITH CARE”–expresses our conviction that solid governance is not just a given. It must be nurtured and sustained over time if we are to attain national goals that we all believe in.

I didnt even read this whole thing but can just say all this analysis is overdone its SIMPLE, America didnt shift, the right did, they moved from being conservative to just bat sh!t crazy. Im sorry the fact that Cuccinelli didnt lose by a landslide shows ppl didnt move THAT much and he was pretty radical on a lot of things. The tea party moved from being supposedly about taxes and fiscal responsibility to Puritans who want to bring back sodomy laws. errrr what? they shut down the government in a petty pout about deliving insurance to more ppl and again, showed their hypocracy in all the outrage speeches about monuments being close by “Obama”. America didnt shift they just recoiled in horror when the little man behind the curtain was revealed.

Don’t forget how hard the right works at purging Democratic voters from the voting list, insisting on specific i.d.s at the polling place, shortening voting hours and early voting. These all tend to decrease the democratic vote, then they say, see, we just lost by a few votes- so the Democrats must have rigged the election and stole it from us!

Cruz and his ilk use dominionism to justify a simple, “to the victors go the spoils” ethos. It’s like children convincing themselves they never need to grow up. Obama is right about them being allergic to work, too. When your whole life is a photo op, you can’t ever break a sweat.

Election day results in my city, where all politics is local, also took a turn to the left as well. Our city council was just one vote away from an ALEC-backed cabal, lead by the mayor whose ties to US Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers did not escape the voters. The re-election of one progressive, and the election of another (whose opponent supports ALEC) keeps our safe in the hands of the good guys. Now, we just have to work on that Cathy McMorris Rodgers thing!!

The Country has a long history of swinging back and forth from the right to the left. Americans just do not do extreme for very long. Most of us believe in the value of caring for most vulnerable amongst us, taking care of the environment so our children and their children after them will have a healthy and wondrous planet to live on. Most believe in a healthy balance between freedom and the good of all and equality that is not just connected with the color of your skin or the amount of money you have in the bank. It how you get there that is always the point of disagreement. The Tea Party version of the GOP, however, wants to push the pendulum further to the right than the American voter can tolerate; their vocal sharing of their values and beliefs along with their use of power to write them into the laws of the land have made the final push of the pendulum back towards the left. The Right will blame the Democrats for their losses and claim they only won because of the “free stuff the dems are giving away;” they will claim it is because they are not being “Conservative enough.” However, the reality is much simpler; their continued losses are just a rejection of everything they stand for, as well as the laws they have passed, and their open hostility to anyone who is not like them. The Democratic Party had to learn the lesson of extremes, they did and bounced back. I believe in the two party system so I am hoping they see the light and come back strong without the Tea Party wing. However, I would not be surprised if we see the GOP’s place on the stage replaced by a new Third Party waiting for the chance in the wings. I’ll take either one, just no tea party please.

Yep I just want a liberal to admit HE LIED or at best He was clueless about what was in the plan and regulations and trusted the white hair witch without knowing she will make him look like crap in the end.

Insurance companies decided that they would rather cancel the policies of millions of Americans rather than bring their policies up to federal standards. When a new apartment building code goes into effect you can either evict the residents and tear down the building or bring the building up to code. Insurance companies decided to evict the residents, made them believe they couldn’t live anywhere else, then built a new building and decided to charge vastly more than the building was worth. They also tried to get those residents to sign the new leases before they had a chance to see the cheaper prices that would go into effect when the building was finished being built. Don’t blame Obama for insurance companies trying to cash in on Romneycare.

He didn’t lie. The insurance companies decided to cancel those plans. The law didn’t force them to do it. At most you could say he misled people based on things he could not know. He did not know that insurance companies would cancel plans rather than bring them up to the new standards. He could not know that those same companies would stop letting you see certain doctors. He could not know that some doctors would opt out of certain companies coverage. This plan was based on Romneycare in Massachusetts. Massive plan cancellations did not happen there, so how could he know ahead of time that they would happen when implemented across the US?

Humana is being fined by Kentucky. Blue Cross is being sued by their policyholders in California. Washington state has issued a consumer alert against Lifewise. The list of shady insurance companies is growing daily. This is all an example of why the industry needed regulating in the first place. The tales of insurance companies lying, cheating, and coercing their clients have only just started to hit the media.

No they aren’t. Most of the plans that were cancelled were far below the new federal standards. The insurance companies were hoping that by cancelling the old plans and automatically enrolling people into new more expensive plans those people wouldn’t bother to look and see if there were cheaper plans out there. In most cases there ARE cheaper plans, even cheaper plans offered by the same company that just signed them up for a more expensive plan. Several states are already slapping fines on insurance companies for “forcing” people to sign up for these more expensive plans before the exchanges were up and running. Some states have begun requiring those companies to lower their rates to equal the new prices offered by the exchanges.

since ACA is one universal coverage, the only difference should be the deductible that one would be willing to endure. “Forcing” is an interesting word to throw into this mix whether it be ACA or private . Insurance. If insurance companies are snookering the clients they should be rounded up , similar goes for perpetrators of ACA for forcing higher deductibles. Is MEDI-CUBA a choice for anyone so desiring.

That comment is a good example of why there is so much confusion over the ACA. The ACA isn’t a coverage at all. It sets the standard that insurance companies must meet. Some insurance companies have already been caught snookering their clients. They believed that they would get away with fleecing their clients like they always have before. The problem is the laws of each state differs on insurance fraud. Most don’t allow the governments in the various states to do much other than fine the company and force them to lower their premiums and the clients deductible to match the exchange rates.

The web site indicates several choices for working class singles and joined/jointed person, seems the differences between the tin and gold options are based on deductibles after factoring in age, financials etc.

I think to simplify these election results: People are gradually and steadily realizing the basic, general negativity that fully encompasses the GOP and the resulting harmful consequences visited upon the American public from it’s insistence that we go backward. The GOP is no longer a governing brand. They only harbor ill will, toward any sector of the working class that currently maintains a decent chance of survival and work feverishly to demonize them (always, only for purpose of helping create jobs). In developing their “think tanks” (propaganda networks) in the 1960’s, they proved successful in germinating strategies that caused the public to begin to vilify unions and our, at the time, “fair and balanced” media. Our country truly needs a minimum of two strong viable parties to access the best ideas from different viewpoints but, the Republicans are awash in politics of constant catastrophe, they have nothing positive to offer the country; with them, negative is the new positive. They’ve become enslaved by developing Stockholm syndrome from the incessant drone of fiction driven platitudes written by scribes within the walls of ‘fort Propaganda’. They’ve actually begun to believe their own lies. The only way to create a new, healthy Republican Party is to designate it as the enemy of representative government that it has truly become, splinter it into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds. We must do our part by pounding the drum for publicly funded elections to deny a platform to the radical – destructive elements of our society we now suffer with, created by a polluted – democracy drowning – truth stifling election finance process favoring only the very wealthy. Their goal is to create such an ugly political climate that “we the people”, will give up and abdicate our responsibility to our country, allowing them to claim “their rightful victory”. “Democracy is not a vicarious experience” – Senator Bill Bradley.